For the second year in a row now, the AHA has resoundingly rejected the proposal of Historians Against War to vote against Israel. Last year they proposed BDS and this year “Protecting the Right to Education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” by monitoring Israeli actions.
As IAM noted, Historians Against War is a radical neo-Marxist group which uses the colonial paradigm to present Israel as a colonial, apartheid state. The report presented to the AHA was biased on a number of counts, not least because the group violated its mandate to employ objective observers. Instead, most of the task members were either pro-Palestinian activists or faculty whose neo-Marxist, critical scholarship is easy to document.
In its decision, the AHA stated that the report was replete with facts that could not be empirically supported. In plain English, the biases of the authors of the reports led them to create a reality that comported with their view of the conflict.
According to the AHA report below "Opponents responded that academic freedom violations are legion throughout the world and that the AHA is already affiliated with Scholars at Risk, a group that monitors violations of academic freedom globally. Some opponents argued that a “yes” vote would be divisive, to which proponents responded that the Association has taken stands on other controversial matters and survived. Members disagreed over whether the occupation was the signal moral issue of our time, as well as whether the AHA has the capacity to do what the resolution would commit it to."
Opponents noted that the AHA should not get involved in issues outside their field of expertise, and that “We should not turn the AHA into a vehicle for a specific Middle East agenda.”
In voting down the BDS proposal the AHA sent a strong signal that professional associations should not get involved in matters that are well outside the scope of their concerns.